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Saturday, September 24, 2011

Cooking for the President of the United States of America

It can be hard to get up and go to work for the past 30 years and convince myself I am going to make the best food I can. When I come to a crossroad in my day, which will determine the quality of my food, I ask myself one question. If I knew the President of the United States was going to eat my food, what should I do?

I put that question to the test on Friday, February 20th, 2011.

Barack Obama was coming to town and our kitchen was going to cater the event! I would be cooking for the President!

The Presidential menu: Box lunches.

Not exactly Portobello Mushroom Wellingtons, but that was fine. We needed 15 vegetarian box lunches, which I was put in charge of. Why do I always get the vegetarian cooking jobs?

Three days before he arrived, his Secret Service started to arrive. They are easy to spot. They are the ones wearing ties. Some companies have casual Fridays. It has been suggested that Intel should have formal Tuesdays.

Secret Service did a sweep of the kitchen. If they just keep the president away from our equipment (see: safety signs blog) he will be fine.

With new flags flying outside, new bark dust laid, a Coast Guard helicopter flying overhead, 5 satellite news trucks with their miles of cables, an ambulance, and a fire truck outside, it was time for the President of the United States of America to arrive.

I packaged up the vegan box lunches, put them on the catering cart, with the rest of the catering, and helped wheel everything to the president. After the secret service inspected each box and we went through the metal detectors, we continued our journey down the hall to the president, only to be stopped short by a very serious, and large gentleman, who told us he would take the cart the rest of the way. So close.

Back to reality:

It was 2 hours until lunch started. I still needed to cook and serve for 100 on my vegan station. On the menu today; The Obama Bowl with a vegan chocolate chip cookie. Just in case.